


A Small Impediment

by theapplekeeper (Deunan)



Series: Writerverse [12]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, Gen, Inquisitor has amnesia, Lavellan is calculating, POV Second Person, but not so good with subtly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-19 20:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3622467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deunan/pseuds/theapplekeeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You do not know what happened at the Conclave. You do not remember who you are or why you're here. Here, caged in a human settlement with many more questions than answers. </p><p>Or: The one in which Lavellan has amnesia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ comm Writerverse and it's prompted challenge: March Table of DOOM! 
> 
> It is also written for a Dragon Age Kink Meme fill, which can be found as end notes. Despite the 'kink' in DAKM, there will be little to no sexual content. This may change, and if so, I'll let you know.
> 
> "Death is a small impediment" - Revan; Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

You wake with the suddenness of something left undone. You don’t know what it is, have no idea its nature, only that further action is needed. It courses through you as frustration and leads to a void of memories that have taken your life. The 'who' and the 'what' and the 'why.' It’s gone. It’s all gone. Panic starts to set in, but then, of course it would. Logical, this fear of such an all-encompassing unknown.

Only it’s not. You know cartography, herbology, astronomy. You go through the history of the world, the stories of its creation and the peoples that inhabit it. There is a list of things you know, of conventions and social mores and you find it’s really only _you_ that has been taken. The connection of _thing_ and _self_.

Assuming you had a self. If you were someone before this. And if you weren’t, what are you now?

You rise from straw bed pondering the nature of such an existence, of what one could be if not a person. Spirit. Remnant. Demon. Dreamer. Hunted, because nothing that comes to mind would be acceptable. Shift focus. This is real. You are real.

It seems ridiculous that you even doubted such a thing.

You pace the dimensions; nine and twelve, and nine and twelve again. It is too small for you, this cell. A preference, then, for wider spaces. Something open. _Sky_ , and it's a whisper, a thought, a yearning, _you need the sky_. You go through the plains of Thedas; of woods you must have walked, of rocky crags and expansive lēa, of rivers and lakes and ocean views. Lands untouched. They are easier and number higher than the cities. Cities where people would sneer and snicker, where they whisper and jeer or point and push and demand you know your place. Your place.

Oh.

You had not given much thought to what you were, when faced with the lost who. You look at your feet, bared to the stone beneath. You skim right ear with the fingertips of your right hand; pointed. Confirmation. _Elf_ , comes the thought. Then: _Dalish. Of course you’re Dalish. Why_ wouldn’t _you be Dalish?_

Association, it weaves a name into being. Lavellan. Clan Lavellan. With it comes sensory attachment, memory, fractured and fragmented, but yours:

Sweet. Sticky. A burst of color, of flavor. The smell of ripe fruit, the fuzz on tongue and juice on palm. Peach. Soft and warm and only very slightly bruised. It is you’re last summer-end’s celebration as a child, eating fruit, the very last of the harvest. There is a den-- no a bower. Lush and green and curving into night’s sky. The moons are high and this year’s beads peek through leaves.

They spark with life, with moonlight, with blue and red firelight; they sway in cooling breeze and chime.

Your arms are tired, your legs as well. You spent the day climbing trees and dancing between branches high above everyone. You placed the strands with the confidence of tradition and a whimsy that’s guided you year after year. You weave and drape them from the highest points.

You are known for it now, the climbing, but you were not always successful.

You have missed before. Spectacularly.

The incident of ’21, comes to mind, where luck alone caught you by the foot and--

\--And you are very much a child. It is not the first time you tumbled with a misstep, but it is the first time you’ve broken something. Or nearly broken something. It would have been better if you broke something.

There is a hand is on your arm, on your shoulder, brushing hair back from your forehead. Melowen’s hand. Worry. Anger. Fear. It is in her tone, in the strength of her hold on you, keeping you still for healing. She threatens to keep you locked in a landship reciting verse. There’s a wibble somewhere deep within as the Keeper works. It’s strange and itchy and warm and you can’t focus on anything or anyone and you sleep.

When you wake Melowen is near glaring at your elder, but she huffs and turns away. Agreement.

“Such energy we can use,” Old Mother says to you, “and this lesson will be clearer come week’s end.”

You don’t know what that means, but between the both of them you can only agree and--

\--And you are older and bored and sore and you stretch into a new position, ease into it, because your torso is wrapped tight and your leg braced in a splint. There’s sun ointment on your chin, a thick paste that steals from your nose anything nice. You’re not in pain, though, the Keeper saw to that.

You tie and knot and bow threads. There are strands and strands of beads. Carved, etched, polished. Metal, bone, glass, wood. Small and round and square and large and thick and hollow. Old Mother has given you to the crafting apprentices again.

So far, the only lesson learned is the surety you were not made to be an artisan. That you will not follow June’s path. Not ever. Not if you have any say.

They left you in the shade beside Gethrith. Gerthrith who's mark of June is still red and swollen with newness on his face. You had been ignoring him, or trying to as he worked malachite and iron into a garland.

“Don’t frown so,” he tells you, “you won’t be here long.” He twirls the garland, a quick snap and it catches in the middle making a circle of double strands.

He places it on your head.

“A crown of earth,” he tells you, because you seek the highest point as if longing for flight.

He says he doesn’t want you to get lost.

You don’t know how that makes you feel. Not really. Warm, maybe; warm and --

\--And you are overly hot and it’s impossible to breathe and you are so very angry.

“What have we learned today?” He asks.

You throw the scroll at his leering grin and walk out. It goes against everything- everything you have ever learned and you don’t what to know it. You don’t. Because it changes everything.

 _Creators_ , you think, _oh gods_.

You don’t make it far. _Oh gods- old gods- no gods._ Hysterical laughter takes your legs, leaves you in an ornate hallway dotted with veilfire. It’s wrong, it’s all wrong and--

\--And you are child small in the shadow of Keeper Deshanna. She has placed a hand on your brow and bade your tears dry. “This too will fade,” she says over-soft, over-kind, and stiffling.

You don’t believe it. Believe her.

Dead is dead.

Falon’Din is a greedy god and you hate him.

You _hate_ him-

-There is a sound of metal boots on wet stone and it comes from somewhere beyond the bars keeping you in the dank and the dark. It breaks you from the trance and leaves you a disjointed mess.

These are things that happened but the emotions go no further than each jagged piece, beginning and ending and yet somehow not entirely separate from who you are now. There’s more, too. You remember a handful of care-free years, nearly in succession, but it is unmoored in the landscape of knowledge you have inherited, in the juxtaposition of emotion that do not lay quiet within.

But there is nothing you can do about it right now, so you count steps.

Forty-seven. A scrape of two hard surfaces, a curse - male. _Ferelden; human_. Ten more. Softer now, moving away from you. Sound echoes in the enclosed area, shifts to linger like a stain of pigment.

Thirteen. A door. Heavy, with a key.

You don’t know how to pick a lock; you would very much like to learn.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which people come and all is not well.
> 
> Or: the one where things are done and said and nobody is sorry for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair Warning: it goes beyond the implications of torture, there's rough handling and Smite-force questioning. It _is_ torture, but there is nothing descriptively brutal and absolutely nothing sexual about it. The Templars are angry and fearful and confused, they are not evil for the sake of it. Just thought I'd clear that up, ahead of time.

The one moving about the darkened hallway beyond your cell is joined by another; they have a whispered conversation that is voice without content. One leaves. One stays. If they traded places, you do not know or care to know. Not yet at least.

The silence is absorbing, soothing. With recovered memories comes a baseline and you almost wish they hadn’t come at all. Since waking there has been a heartbeat in your head, in your hand, and it seems your body has taken to memories and rewards you with pain. 

There is a roughness to lips that has you wondering how much and when you were given water last. Raking teeth against the dead skin of bottom lip has you wishing that there was something as simple as a pebble to suck on. There isn’t. You’ve checked.

You solve the problem after a thorough examination of a piece of straw. You also find three coppers and a dried husk of witherstalk root, shriveled beyond all use.

As for your hand? It sings, just slightly, it glows and it swirls. The slightest touch of right fingers to left palm sends a pulse of that heartbeat-pain; you don’t try it again. You don’t know what’s wrong with it. There doesn’t seem to be an explanation. You know only that it has not always been.

A metal gate slams and there are more armored footsteps. You wonder how many prisoners are down here, but you can neither see nor hear anything beyond the guard. Either human cities are not plagued by crime as you were taught or you have been placed in isolation.

Given the magic-hand, the thickness of stone walls, the strength of iron bars, and the scattered straw in the _five other cells_ , you think it pretty clear where you fall in this.

In the end, they do not leave you alone for long.

It is clear they had not thought you yet awake, caught like they were. One stumbles, another flinches, and the third almost drops his torch. What fright you gave them doesn’t last for long. 

You are brought low by a smite. _Mage_ , comes the thought as knees hit hard stone and the pain of it doesn’t even register because you are a mage under a soul-rending Templar’s smite.

It takes away color and sound and the fearful touch of human hands from humans who are suddenly in your cell and looming tall before you. You can’t breathe- you can’t breathe- and it seems a moot point because something hits your chin and there’s a lot you can’t do.

When sound comes back, when thought and feeling come back, you are chained and laying on the depression before your cell. A sunburst mosaic that is imprinting onto sore cheek and cooling the burn at your jaw.

“You will tell us,“ and _well, well_ you do not think as the Templars make themselves known, _still here?_ “how you did it.”

There is a boot on your back and something dripping from your nose. You figure the skin over right hipbone is bruising. Your left side has gone numb and it’s a blessing. It really is. Metal scrapes on stone and, yes, your head still hurts very much.

“You can tell us or you will tell the Hands.” The pressure on your back grows. “You will not like the Hands.”

You’re actually more worried about swords and smites and booted feet, but hands got you here so, yeah, you’re pretty much not liking any of it.

There is a woman in mage robes watching from the corner. She is the only one you can see, in this position, but you notice her only when she speaks: “Please be aware that the Seeker Pentaghast and the Nightingale Leliana would be displeased with this line of questioning.”

 _Tranquil,_ slots into the question of what she is and why stands tall but listless.

“I’m Cullen’s second and in command,” is said, “An in command until he returns from forward camp.”

“Under such circumstance that the prisoner regains consciousness the Seeker Pentaghast, the Nightingale Leliana, the Commander Cullen, and the Apothecary Adan are to be informed immediately.” 

“Then, you’d best get to it.”

As she disappears from sight you’re pushed onto your back. It’s not a kick. Not really. But it’s close enough to hurt. 

You don’t close your eyes. You don’t dare. 

Now you can see a second armored Templar and a woman in plainclothes, but leaning on the hilt of her bastard-sword, stand at the only exit. A mercenary? No. Another Templar. Or militia. _No, Templar _.__

Above you are wooden rafters and somewhere beyond that there is light creeping in through metal grating. It’s wrong, that light, though you don’t pay it enough attention to puzzle out the why.

You can see second in command now. He's a big guy. Big and mean and blocking everything else. He’s missing an eyebrow and somewhere in the long history of using his face as a fist he had set his nose wrong. 

You get the distinct impression he wants to break you like ancient pottery.

“If you’re a demon,” he says and kneeling does nothing to diminish his presence, “you’re a clever one. I’ll give you that.” He takes hold of your jaw with little regard for swelling, moves your head this way, then that. “Playing the long game, perhaps. Well, no matter.

“Now. How did you do it?” He asks again.

You can practically see the smite in his eyes, so you say “I didn’t do anything.”

Wrong answer.

And for a while there is no escaping him, his smite, or his questions. They are the same, his actions, his questions; your answers. It's cause and effect and for every cycle there is a stubborn strength growing within you even as resentment and all its offspring take root. _Do not yield_ , and this is more than a thought. It is a command. You tell yourself this, and this too grows and swells with your strength and your resentment.

When it stops, it is not help that comes to your aid, but authority. Angry authority. In the form of two armored women and three helmeted guards.

You miss most of their exchange, understanding language as sound and not color takes attention you had been giving to the mantra of survival. But you get there, eventually.

The woman in platemail is talking. _Truth Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast,_ comes the thought as all the others have come to you, _Right Hand of the Divine_. Then: _ambitious, pious, absolute_. 

“You will report to Commander Cullen. And,” there is a pause as she looks between them, continues with a quiet surety of one who knows how to get her way. “Do not think to run.”

The one in chainmail and a purple hood smiles - _Shadow Viper Leliana Broussard, Left Hand of the Divine. Unbreakable, obsessive, blinded_ \- and adds: “If you run, we will find you instead.”

They do not run, they walk very, very fast. Safe bet they are going straight to their Commander Cullen. You don’t care if they make it, if they take the gamble of the threat. Rather, you hope they do just as your hope the women follow through.

When attention is turned to you, you are moved, once more, onto your back. Smaller hands this time, still with little care for your hurts. There is a snap you can feel and fire and you try for air even as you say “I didn’t, I didn’t."

There’s a pressure to your temple and it’s only when opening your eyes you realize someone hit you again. There's a blurred shape that resolves into a man in a Circle robe. There are no Templars in sight, or feel, you cannot sense them as you can the two in this prison. 

And you can sense the them, sense something coming off both. Like a secret mummer of energy and life in a way you hadn’t thought to look for with the Templars. And when you reach for that magic, it's there. There, but weak, so very weak. Barely a drop of the reservoir you can only just remember wielding. 

“Tsk. None of that now.” Female. Orlesian. You remember: Leliana, Left, Viper. Definitely not the man holding a health potion to greedy lips. “You don’t want a Templar to come near, yes?”

“Bloody waste of perfectly good potions,” the man says - _Mage. Herbcraft. Look at that fine trimmer in his hand_ \- to the woman even as he feeds you another. “If they had a lick of since I’d put them on harvesting and preparation.”

“They will be duly punished,” she says. To him. To you. It doesn’t matter. The taste of healthroot is strong and working and you gather as much of your magic as you can. It slithers over you, but it does nothing. Absolutely nothing.

“Stop that, I’ll not have you ruining my hard work.”

 _Dispellment,_ is the explanation. It feels odd in a way you can’t quite place. Foreign. _Your will is being nullified_.

There’s something you can do about that. You know there is. Only the potion is taking effect and everything is too far away. Even your magic. Especially your magic.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You ask what you should have earlier: "How did I survive?" 
> 
> Or: The one in which there is much talk of trials.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, Cassandra and the Herald are confrontational. Also, the three trails that the Herald mentions? Yeah, that's a bastardization of Medieval Law. (And now I can't get Monty Python's duck/witch skit out of my head. Damn you, Quest for the Holy Grail!)

The third rift closed and a Commander left behind, you make your way forward. The drop, that final little bit of distance traveled, brings the dead into view. You ask what you should have earlier: “How did I survive?”

“To survive such an explosion of magical force would be nearly impossible,” Solas says from behind. “No, I theorize your continued existence is the result of the initial swell of transference. The build-up, as it were. Whatever connects you to the Fade pulled you in, to relative safety, before the explosion.”

“Pulled me _in_? Wait. No. If there was a transfer of energies, would the result” and you wave your glowing hand at the burnt bodies as to include everything in ‘the result,’ “be from something done this-side of the Fade, then? Something actually happened at the Conclave?”

“You doubt this?” And it is with tone and expression Cassandra calls your intelligence into question.

You want to say you doubt everything on principle and her truth in particular. You don’t.

“Both sides exist,” you say, instead. “This, here. And the Fade. Separate but equally real.” Your eyes catch on something, patterns etched into blackened glass. It’s in your right hand before you think about picking it up, so you must be something of a magpie. No matter, it will be a souvenir, a memory made of twisted glass spiraled into the form of lightening preserved. A memory all jagged edged and transparent darkness. The crystalized lyrium is a potential bonus secreted away with a sleight-of-hand you don’t remember learning.

“So?”

“So,” you repeat, “if both places exist, why then would your stone temple be the one to house the explosive? Why couldn’t it have happened _in the Fade_ and this- this here- this destruction be the result of what happened there? You accuse me of doing this, this unknown thing, but you don’t know. You don’t know if anyone could do something like this. You assume, like the city humans, and look for the easiest explanation – the easiest to blame: an unconscious elf.”

“Mage,” Cassandra corrects immediately. “You fell from a tear in the Fade leaking magic. You could have been possessed, dangerous—No, you _are_ dangerous.” The look she gives you is not pleasant, “And there is no proof of your innocence.”

“Nor of my culpability. You don’t know what happened. I do not remember. Still, I have been locked away in a damp dungeon, shackled and parted from that which is me, for naught but suspicion in face of survival. I have been told that even should I live through this insane quest you and your lot will bind me again for execution.”

“ _Trial_ ,” and now the word is a growl. “You would have a fair _trial_.”

“And who is to me my judge? You? No. I would be taken and paraded around, a villain. Did you not say your people clamor for someone, anyone, to blame?”

“I did. Yes. But you will get a trail, none the less.”

You laugh, it’s short and harsh and it’s barely a sound, more an exhale, but it’s all disbelief. “And when was the last time an elf was proven innocent against a claim from the noble class? And Dalish, at that. So unwanted by society that the only safe place is the seclusion found in wooden lands too savage for the civilized. How do I defend myself when I canna remember a thing?”

“I.” Cassandra tries again, “I do not know. You are our only lead, however. Mayhap your memories will be returned.” 

“Oh yes,” your searing is undisguised now. “Oh yes, let’s pray. Let’s do.” There is something about this you do not like; there is a lot about this, actually, you like not at all. There’s hate and anger and frustration and it is a rip-tide dragging you under. You might have just had an unfortunate encounter with the humans, or the Templars, or the mages. You might be justified. Or you might just be cracking under the realization that this is real, that this is happening and it doesn’t matter anymore. You cannot stay silent, not here, not so close to the root of this, not so close where you have been brought- on a lark- to see just how useful you could be to the Truth Seeker.

Hours old and slated for death, it seems senseless to mind your tongue and keep your silence; so you don’t.

“Only,” you say “your apostate, who seems a scholar of Fade magics, has theories. Theories that allow for possibility and uncertainty and yet still finds it hard to believe that ‘ _any mage has the power_ ’ to do this. There were others at the Conclave, surely. Take a look at the list of attendees yet, Seeker? You have made in light of your ‘ _ongoing examination into the facts,_ ’ yes?” 

“Solas’ word is not absolute and you are not on trial _here_.”

“No” you say in agreement. “No. Trial by Combat would be too easy and who wants to see an armed elf, besides? Trial by Ordeal? Well, your Templars have already gotten my answer through force. It is unchanged, since, by the way. The very fact I have survived- them, the Fade, the Conclave- should be proof enough that the Gods wish for me to live. Oh, but wait. I am heathen. There are no gods, only one, and he is your Maker and we know where elves rate in your chant.

“You say I will have a fair trial? The truth will be decided by your Banns and your Earls and your wounded Chantry. There is no one to stand as my second, no one to speak for me, no one who can.” And here you throw back the words that greeted you, the second time, when she came to see you awake from her blow: “Everyone is dead, but me.”

“There will be justice, in your trial and for Divine Justinia’s-“

“-Death. Yes. I got that. Thank you. But I’ll tell you this, shem, should I have wished to assassinate your knock-off Keeper, I would have chosen the subtitles of poison and been well free of your lot. Shame no one thought or managed it before now because it looks like might have saved a lot of lives.”

“Shit,” comes from Varric just as Cassandra takes a swing.

Your barrier snaps into place without thought. Good thing too, you think, for her strength could knock a tree down. Even so, you cannot keep your footing. As you fall, you find you are not one to go down alone. The telekinetic blast of power doesn't come as easily as you think it should, but it is just as quick and it is just as effective. 

Before either of you can retaliate, there is the feel of Solas’ magic that brushes against your senses and entangles you. It is a glyph of paralysis and he has written it into being with enviable skill. 

You would feel betrayed had you not held him as Stranger and had he not held the human as well. 

“Perhaps,” Solas says, looking down at the both of you, “being that we are this close to the Breech, we could put such things aside.” And by ‘such things’ you translate his words to mean ‘petty squabbling’. Only this isn't anywhere near ‘petty’ and it’s insulting to be dismissed so. “As neither one of you might live beyond the next encounter, I suggest we press what little advantage we have and move now. While we can. Had you but asked for an update on the Fade, I would have told you as we drew ever closer that I sense the spread and increasing instability of the tear.”

There is silence between your group and if the Seeker looks at you for agreement or truce, you do not know it. You swat at the magic at your legs and rise with as much grace as you can, fighting between chastised yearling and wronged adult. 

You turn from them and lead the way, as you have lead since the Seeker’s insistence at the broken bridge and a battle you wish had claimed the her life.

It is minutes spent in silence as you walk through charred ground and melted stone. It doesn't take much to find the new path of booted make, to follow it as you remember following tracks in a hunt. A small army has moved through, going and coming. Only the blind would miss it. It is how you know the way, why your steps to the epicenter of destruction know no hesitance, and it is how you can lead them unerringly through impossibly intact hallways bleeding with magic you don’t recognize. You do not lose the trail, not once. You are hunter trained, after all. Magic came latter.

When you get there, rocks are in the sky and light is bouncing between two Fade tears.

Two. Not one. You do not think of luck or laughing gods. You are too relieved at the implications of such a complication. Time. It means you have more time. More time for something to go wrong and you can leave with head intact.

You very carefully do not smile.

**Author's Note:**

> (SPOILERS - for DA:Inquisition quest-lines and this story's plot-spine) 
> 
> The Kink Meme asked for: an evil!Mage Lavellan who's suffering from amnesia, a Corypheus as their SIC, and world domination plots. Bonus points for: restoration of memories via quest based fade-shenanigans, a personality shift/clash between who the Inquisitor is against what they were, and if the Quizy is named Revan (from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which this request seems to be based on).


End file.
